{"id":111,"date":"2005-09-20T21:02:27","date_gmt":"2005-09-21T05:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/2005\/09\/20\/the-tipping-point-book-review\/"},"modified":"2005-09-20T21:02:27","modified_gmt":"2005-09-21T05:02:27","slug":"the-tipping-point-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/2005\/09\/the-tipping-point-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tipping Point: Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<table cellspacing=\"10\">\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/roller\/resources\/syw\/tippingpoint.jpg\" height=100>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<b>The Tipping Point<\/b>: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference<br \/>\n<br \/><i>Malcolm Gladwell<\/i><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"-1\">ISBN: 0316346624<br \/>\n<br \/>Pub. Date: January 2002<br \/>\n<br \/>Publisher: Little, Brown &#038; Company<\/font>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>\nMalcolm Gladwell demystifies an important biological and social phenomenon &#8211; the underneath forces to make things &#8220;tip over,&#8221;  or the way a very large number of people get influenced, either socially or biologically.  This is a competence every politician, marketeer, or terrorist would die to master.<br \/>\nI do not imagine myself to ever try to start or organize an epidemic.  The best use of this knowledge, beside as a wonderful personal enrichment (a.k.a. conversational topic), is the ability to spot the making of an epidemic and remain as an independent thinker.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of this blog entry is the reader&apos;s digest version, with some personal opinions injected.  It may ruin the book for you.<\/p>\n<hr width=\"25%\">\n<p>There are 3 rules of epidemics: the power of few, the stickiness factor, and the power of context.<\/p>\n<ul type=\"square\">\n<li>\nThe Power of the Few is the most interesting concept.  For an epidemic to &#8220;tip,&#8221; it requires 3 kinds of people to work together: the connectors, the mavens, and the salesmen.  The connector has the ability to spread messages to a wide number of people.  The maven can produce the best information.  And the salesman will make the perfect pitch.  They can be as few as 1 person each.  Sometime, the same person can play more than 1 roles.  It is highly unlikely for a single person to be all three.<\/p>\n<p>\nWhat roles do I play?  Who can play the other roles?  When I encounter one of those rare connectors, mavens, or salesmen, how do I recognize them and make sure they are on my team?\n<\/li>\n<li>Even those best few people may not be able to make the message &#8220;stick&#8221; &#8211; that it becomes memorable.  Stickiness is not intuitive and often requires just a little modification to the original message.  The key learning point is to be scientific &#8211; test until the message sticks.  The obvious ways experts design frequently do not work.\n<\/li>\n<li>Context stresses the subtleness of how people make decision, or the unconscious factors that we all are influenced.  No one discards thrashes on a spotless street.  No one vandalizes the walls of a 5-star hotel.  How a message arrives is as important as the message itself.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell ISBN: 0316346624 Pub. Date: January 2002 Publisher: Little, Brown &#038; Company Malcolm Gladwell demystifies an important biological and social phenomenon &#8211; the underneath forces to make things &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/2005\/09\/the-tipping-point-book-review\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomadicminds.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}